No more goody two shoes
You’ve never seen her like this before, that’s for sure. Tattooed in a tank top, playing a tough ex-con, country-and-western singer. Good grief! Is this a role for Olivia Newton-John? Yep, and one of the best she’s ever had. Her name is Bitsy Mae Harling. She can sing an American country song to make you cry. She sports a bleached-blonde haircut with a couple of centimetres of coal-black roots, and a mean Texan accent.
When the film Sordid Lives, a low-budget comedy, premiered at the Palm Beach International Film Festival in February, audiences were stunned by Olivia’s role, saying they “didn’t think she had it in her”. Woman’s Day had an exclusive sneak preview of the provocative and hilarious movie which opens in the US later this year. And Olivia is a knockout. “Most directors never see me like her, so it was great fun and not the usual me,” says Olivia, who plays a larger-than-life woman with a notorious reputation in a small town. From the opening scene where she sings the title song Sordid Lives, she blows away the goody-goody image typified by her role as Sandy in the hit musical Grease.
The man responsible for Olivia’s dramatic metamorphosis is Del Shores, who wrote and directed the film based on his own life. The movie, which also features Beau Bridges and former Designing Women star Delta Burke, tells the story of a young man who returns to his Texan home town for his grandma’s funeral, and his struggles with revealing to his family that he’s gay. “Olivia gets Bitsy Mae just perfect,” Del says. “Hollywood typecasts you in a certain way, and here she has this great rough image. I think she really enjoyed playing that tough girl. She relished the chance to do something so different.”
So how did she land the offbeat part? “I met her through her sister Rona, who is my best friend,” Del says. “I wrote the story as a play first, and Rona brought Olivia to see it in Hollywood.” He adds, “When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Olivia. I had every one of her records. My parents let me skip school to drive three hours to see her in concert when I was 17. Olivia kept me straight at least through high school!”
The two have since become firm friends. “She called me on my birthday and sang to me,” Del recalls. “I told her I was doing the movie and she said jokingly, Why don’t you let me do the part?” Olivia adds, “Del was so keen for me to do it. I was flattered he was taking a big chance. I’d never had an American accent in a movie, and never played this kind of role.”
But even after he got the green light, Del admits he was unsure about casting Olivia. “I knew she had acted before, but I was thinking of a country singer,” he says. But Del coached Olivia on her accent and gave her tapes to listen to in the car. Del says, “She just nailed it. She’s a great mimic. She also had a lot of fun with the part. In fact, we all had the time of our lives.”
By Ivor Davis
More about Sordid Lives the movie.